Research on Strategy Optimization of Green Agricultural Production Trusteeship to Promote Black Land Protection
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI am pleased to review the manuscript titled "Multi Agent Behavior Decision of Green Agricultural Production Trusteeship under the Protection of Black Land in Northeast China" (ID: soil-2862694). This is a meaningful and interesting topic, with the theme of "black soil protection" as the background. The logic of the manuscript is relatively clear and the content is also rich. However, there is still significant room for improvement. Please find the following comments and suggestions to further improve the manuscript:
1.The title "Multi Agent Behavior Decision of Green Agricultural Production Trusteeship under the Protection of Black Land in Northeast China" may seem attractive, but it does not reveal the goal, and readers cannot obtain any information about the intention of this study. I would like to suggest the author to modify the title to make it clearer.
2. The author's analysis in the abstract section has poor logical coherence, unclear hierarchy, poor readability, and repeated expressions in multiple places.
3. The author's expression in multiple parts of the manuscript is casual and subjective, which can easily lead to ambiguity. For example, the cultivability of black soil in Northeast China is declining, and two rounds of black soil protection pilot projects have been carried out in Northeast China. Scholars have confirmed that significant results have been achieved. In lines 83-85, the author mentions that "green development is a new type of development mechanism that emphasizes following the natural laws of social and economic development, achieving the re integration of various resource elements within the range of ecological environment capacity and resource carrying capacity, implementing" greening "throughout the entire industrial process, aiming to promote economic growth and ensure coordinated and sustainable development between humans and nature.". Is its purpose only for economic growth? Should the focus not be on improving the quality and quantity of cultivated soil? Should we calculate an index so that the analysis can be more specific?
4. The author has a certain lack of understanding about the definition of "green agricultural production trusteeship", which leads to certain limitations in variable selection. The analysis is more based on economic aspects, which means that the grain harvest and planting benefits are obvious? The core goal of black soil protection is to protect the quantity and quality of cultivated soil. This is also the biggest flaw of the article, so it is recommended that the author revise the title.
5. Under the condition of not transferring soil management rights, agricultural production trusteeship farmers divide the farming, planting, management, and harvesting operations in agricultural production into whole or more stages and entrust them to strong agricultural socialized service organizations for management. They pay a certain trusteeship fee, and the service organizations complete the cultivation and sowing of the soil, and the harvest belongs to the farmers. So, in the author's article, is it the whole process or the half process, Should the author provide rigorous explanations in the article?
6. In the process of literature review, the author mainly lists and only provides "synthesis" without "description". In addition, the literature review does not further analyze relevant foreign research. Is there no research on agricultural production trusteeship in foreign countries?
7.I noticed several grammar and spelling errors throughout the entire manuscript. It requires proofreading, finding a native English speaker, and correcting all spelling errors. "Black soil" should be changed to "Black Soil".
8. Please confirm the proper terminology and the corresponding unified expressions, and thoroughly standardize all these consistent manuscripts. In addition, please thoroughly check the manuscript and ensure the consistency of the following expressions throughout the entire manuscript, such as "this study", "this article", and "this study".
9.Many places in the text,, there are several letters of a word are dropped to the next line, that is the words are split, which makes it difficult for the reader to read and understand. It might be a problem of the settings for the MS Word Software, please fix this problem.
As such, your paper appears rather limited in terms of addressing or elaborating a specific theoretical/ethics puzzle that would appeal to the audience/readers.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Moderate editing of English language required
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAbstract. Although the abstract is too long, the details about the main policies implications are missing.
Introduction fails to present any other similar initiatives in the word (except trusteeship of green agricultural production). There are public policies that develop different kind of labels that internalise positive externalities for consumers. Explanatory details about the main differences around these approaches are missing.
Theoretical background - Equations from table 1 should be presented in the explanatory text.
Results section is too long. It is difficult to be understand. Discussions about the main results’ implications are missing.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease, see the attached document
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper analyses agricultural trusteeship in China by an evolutionary game model. In the model, three types of players (The government, farmers, and service organizations) are assumed, and they interact with each other and make their decisions according to their own interests. The three types of players have two strategies and choose one of the two depending on other players’ choices. The authors investigate which strategies are likely to be chosen both theoretically and numerically with real data. As a whole, the paper is interesting. Nevertheless, I think, some revisions are needed before publication as shown below.
Evolutionary game theory (EGT) usually considers situations where there are many agents. In the model proposed in the paper, there seems to be only one government since the authors use the word “the government”. I do not think, this is not a common assumption in EGT. Therefore, the authors need to explain more about why EGT is applicable to the situation the authors consider.
I find some inconsistency between Figture 2 and Table 1. From Figure 2, I had an impression that the game is consecutive as the government firstly makes decisions and then the service organizations and finally the farmers. On the other hand, Table 1 indicates that the different players make their decisions simultaneously. Please describe more clearly which assumption is made.
The same symbol F is used to express the derivatives of different variables x, y, and z. This may confuse the readers. I would suggest using different names for the “right hand sides” of the replicator equations. Moreover, the expression F (x) is not strictly correct, F(x,y,z) is more appropriate.
I find some expressions that may cause misunderstandings. For example, in line 386, it is stated that “x=0 and x=1, y =… are … equilibrium points.” In fact, x=1 or y=… are not points in the three-dimensional state space. I would suggest describing more accurately.
Figure 3 , 4 and 5 are hard to understand. Please insert more detailed descriptions as captions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease, see the attached document
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsBasically, I am satisfied with the improvements the authors have done.
I would recommend publication of this manuscript.
Just one thing to be checked before publication: Please confirm that the images used in Figure 2 and Figure 14 are not copyrighted if they were sourced from the internet.
Author Response
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